greatest accomplishments for older americans in the history of this country into a voucher system that puts seniors at the mercy of insurance companies. the president will not do that. i am confident that he will make that case when he has the opportunity to go before the american people again in the debate next week. i know he feels the vice president made that case very well. ..

>> of the next on booktv, lynn povich, the first female senior editor at "newsweek" magazine, recounts her involvement with 46 of her female colleagues in a class-action lawsuit against "newsweek" for hiring and promotion discrimination on march 16, 1970. this is about 45 minutes. >> thank you so much and thank you to the folks at books, inc. and the palo alto library. for this wonderful evening. you're lucky to have two wonderful institutions here.

so, "the good girls revolt," it began on march 16, 1970 when 46 of us who worked at "newsweek" sued the magazine for gender discrimination and hiring and promotion. we were protesting a system in which virtually all of the riders were men and all of the women were researchers or fact checkers. it was a system that henry had devised when he created "time" magazine in 1929. he separated the editorial functions of the newsmagazine. and a newspaper report goes out, reports the star, comes back and writes the story and is responsible for the accuracy of the story. he separated those functions in which the reporters in the field reported a story, sent files to a writer in new york who wrote the story, and then the story was fact checked.

and only women were hired as fact checkers, and all the reporters and writes women. so "newsweek" started in 1933 they simply copied the times format. if you apply to "newsweek" and wanted to be a writer you were simply told that women do not write at "newsweek." if you want to write go somewhere else. and, in fact, that's what a lot of women did. women who knew they wanted to be journalists or had been working on the college papers, women like nora, jane, ellen goodman, susan brown miller all came to "newsweek" as researchers, realized he would never be promoted and then left fairly quickly to have very successful careers afterwards. but we were the good girls. so we were highly educated, mostly white middle-class girls who were told in college that we were very smart and we are very competent, but the word career in the '60s was hardly ever

mentioned. some women went on to navy medical school or law school but most women were expected to have a job until they get married and have children. we came to "newsweek" thinking that this is a fabulous, and it was, a very glamorous job to have in those days. we started as actually women were hired on a male desk to deliver the mail. and you graduated to clipper where you clicked newspapers and deliver them to the riders. if you are really good you got to be a researcher. that was a real exciting job because, in fact, you worked on the stories of the week that were breaking news. you worked with writers, reporters, the editors. and those of us who work in the sections in the back of the magazine, from medicine or the arts or lifestyle or religion,

did a lot of reporting as did the women in the business section because new york was the financial capital of the world. so we got to be reporting in addition to the fact checking. and it was a very collegial place. we were good friends with the writers and reporters. it was a patriarchal place. it was run by men, and the man at the top, osborn elliott, had this -- we're all on first name so we called him on his come had the veneer of being equal even though we weren't. but it felt very sort of collegial. and, of course, in the midst when i got there, the sex revolution was happening. there was a lot of sex at "newsweek," sometimes mutual. it was a great job to have. so in the late '60s, around 60, 69 the women's movement was starting to gain steam. we were reading about it, some of the women work in consciousness raising groups.

i was to cover means of radical women, the red stockings group would only talk to women reporters so i was reporting on them. we suddenly begin to realize that this didn't just apply to those women. and also apply to us. and our revolt began when one of our researcher friends, a woman named judy who was a marshall scholar, came back to new york and could not find a job and it up as a fact checker in "newsweek." with having a conversation one day with a friend of hers who was a lawyer, and so the ones that tell me about "newsweek" and judy told her about our job, and the woman said that's illegal. judy said, it is? and she said yes you cannot segregate jobs by gender. in 1964 civil rights act outlawed it. judy was absolutely fabric ousted. they called the equal opportunities employment commission in washington and find it. so the next day she dialed the

eeoc in washington and the woman said yes, that's legal. and she said i don't think the men know it's illegal. [laughter] she said why don't we just tell them? and the woman said, are you crazy? she said people in power don't want to give up power. they will promote -- she said to have a very clear case. you have to sue. so now judy had a moral issue. it wasn't just she wasn't being promoted, it was this is an illegal thing. and one by one she started talking to her friends. i was the fifth person that she spoke to. and we decided because we were terrified that we would be fired if anybody found out, that we each of us would talk to one other person who did talk to one of the person. and where do we organize? in the ladies room. that plays have tears in the organization. and so, we want by one got to be

about 20 women on the staff when we realized we needed on the largest to figure out what we're going to do. unfortunately, the only women who didn't join us at the time where the black researchers. there were about four or five women at the time who were researchers, and we went to them and asked him to join. they were really torn. i mean, really their loyalty was to the civil rights movement. they felt at the time, this is the late '60s, more discriminated against as blacks than they did as women. they also felt that we very privileged middle-class white women didn't exactly have the same goals as they did. we worried about our present getting ahead. they were worried about that but they had to work -- the word about much larger issues within the black community about their families and about what was going on with racism. and so they decided not to join us. we were very sorry about because

they were all terrific women. and later they told me, several of them went to interview them, they realize later how much being a woman ever discriminate against as well. but at that moment in time it was a very heady moment for the civil rights movement. so we were looking for a woman lawyer. we wanted a woman of course, and most of the women's lawyers were at entrust to the state. so we decided this is a civil rights case and we should go to the aclu. there we found the system legal director of the aclu with a woman named eleanor holmes norton. now the representative from the district of columbia. eleanor is as fiery and as passionate now as she was thin but she was seven months pregnant. jihad and after out of here, and went to visit her in her office, or of us i remember, and she was going have the system worked at "newsweek" and she grabbed the magazine out of her hand and she

opened it to a math test and she said, well, the fact of their men from the top category to the next of the last category, and the fact that there are only women in this last category means there's a pattern of discrimination. so i'm going to take this case. she was great. so all this is happening, the beginning of 1970 when "newsweek" decided that the women's movement was becoming very newsworthy and they would do a cover story on women's lib, it was then called. there was one problem. they didn't have a woman to write it. they knew they could have a man write it. i actually had been promoted as a junior writer six-month earlier to right fashion and other features by my boss was a great mentor, but i was not really experienced enough to write a cover. so for the first time in newsweek's history they went outside and they hired a star right at the near post to come and freelance the piece for

"newsweek." so being good journalists, we knew we had a great news take. so the monday that "newsweek" came out on the newsstands, with a cup on the women's movement called women in revolt, 46 of us announced we were suing the magazine. for sex discrimination. you can imagine it was delicious timing and all the news organizations covered us. not only in new york but in london and in italy, and all over the world. my favorite headline was a daily news headline was newsstands soon "newsweek." and then the first line was 46 women, most of them young and most of them pretty announced that they were suing "newsweek" for sex discrimination. [laughter] later that day the editor released a statement to the

press because anyone called him afterwards, in which he said the fact that virtually all the riders were men and all of the women were researchers was a newsmagazine tradition that goes back 50 years. simply underscoring the institutional sexism of the newsmagazine. and later that afternoon he called katharine graham who is the publisher and owner of the "washington post" and the "washington post" then told "newsweek." to tell her that the women at "newsweek" had sued. and katherine graham as she said in a wonderful autobiography, as she famously said to them, which side am i supposed to be on? so we quickly negotiated an agreement that vaguely promised to hire and promote and change women. we signed our agreement on august 261970 which was the first women's strike for equality -- august 26, 1970.

unfortunately, very little happened after that. osborn elliott runs a business i could use. the editors that took over were not committed to the cause, and two years later, 1972 we are so frustrated that we voted to sue again. this time eleanor holmes norton had become human rights commission of the city of new york and could not represent us. so we found a brilliant young lawyer at columbia need harriett who was running and employment rights clinic at columbia law school. and she came in and she started to do an evidence-based system of discrimination. she took depositions from us. she did a pattern of how many men have equal qualifications and yet what were they getting paid and what positions they d did. and in the negotiations, she asked her what was then called goals and timetables, if you remember those formulations.

some of the reporters and writers to be women and one-third of the research to be men, to integrate the category to show that it wasn't a woman's job. it was a entry-level job. and her last demand was that to be a woman senior editor by the end of 1975. at this point, katharine graham after we sued the second time, was being sued by blacks at the "washington post" called the metro seven were unhappy that they were not very many blacks empower there. and the women were not happy. they were writing a lot of letters to ben bradlee about there being unhappy with the situation. so she then turned to a corporate lawyer who is a man named joseph alfano who later became secretary of h.e.w. under lyndon johnson. to come up and negotiate with us. so when we laid out these goals and timetables and so this is what the women want, they were okay except for the last one.

said you can't have a woman senior editor because its management and you can't tell management who to hire. we simply say we're not signing an agreement that doesn't have a woman in the meetings were all the decisions are being made. and so that he finally agreed, and that memorandum of understanding was signed in 1973, and in august of 75 i was appointed to the position as the first woman senior editor. there was enormous progress for women everywhere between 1975 1975-1985, almost every company started hiring women. women were coming out of graduate schools in much greater numbers. we had a woman covering the president, not the first lady of the white house, the white house correspondent covers the president. we had a woman sent to somalia to cover a war. she asked to go to vietnam. they wouldn't let her go. they let it go to somalia. we had a woman covering the iran hostage crisis. and you begin to see women on

television much more reporters and writers. but i don't want to leave you with this idea that the women's movement was great for everyone. there are stories in my book of women who could not make the transition with very talented woman reporter who was sent to a bureau, trish riley, who just didn't want, she was the first woman and her family to go to college. she went to berkeley. she was expected to get married and have kids. she just wanted to be a researcher and she turned down the promotion. and about a year and half later she was offered a promotion as a writer, she was so talented. and she just couldn't do it and she just panicked and left. the women's movement was not the best movement for every woman. some people could just not make the transition. it was very difficult sadly challenge everything you were raised to believe and to challenge your bosses.

-- suddenly challenge. it mostly offered opportunity many of us. we never would've had, but not everybody was able to take advantage of it. i started writing this book about five years ago, and about two years ago i got a phone call from a couple of young women who are working at "newsweek" in 2010. they were feeling frustrated at "newsweek." this was when jon meacham was the editor. they suddenly were feeding like nobody was listening to what they were saying, somehow guys with equal or lesser credentials were getting better assignments, getting faster promotions. but this was a young woman who are raised to believe that you could do it anything and be anything you want to be. and also felt that they were post-feminists. the sex wars were all over, we were all equal now. so it couldn't be discrimination. it must be that they were not good enough, that they just

weren't talented enough. and then somebody at "newsweek" in the library who had been a longtime told him that in this case of "newsweek" 40 years ago by the women, which they had no idea about. there was no evidence at "newsweek" anymore about this case. so when my favorite stories is they went on google and googled it, and they couldn't find anything so they felt it's not in google, it must not have existed. [laughter] and then someone gave them susan brown miller's memoir and our time, susan had written some pages about our suits of the start to contact some of us. and i met with him, and he was just fascinating to me that day, they were feeling what we were feeling, and this was 40 years later. they propose to "newsweek" that this is around the time if you remember that david letterman had a scandal on his show, there was a guy at espn who was accused of having a relationship with a young producer and he was fired. so they propose to "newsweek" do

a story on women in the workplace today, pegged to the 40th anniversary of the "newsweek" sued which would be in march 2010. they wrote the story. i congratulate them for getting the story and and i congratulate "newsweek" for publishing the story. and in the store they talked about young women all across the workplace. it wasn't just journalistic it was the fact that women mbas come out of business school, get paid less than male mbas, in their first jobs. they talk about how few women there were at the top in the talk about "newsweek." they said at "newsweek" in the past year of the 49 cover stories, only six have been written or cowritten by women. so it made a big impact. and then two months later "newsweek" was sold. that was the first time that

there was a female editor of "newsweek" magazine, first time. 40 years after our suits. it's very interesting because people say where are we now in relation to all of us? are we there yet? what's been solved and what hasn't? there's been enormous progress to obviously you see women everywhere now in middle management and senior management. you see women covering wars in iraq and in afghanistan. you see, you know, women who are in every profession and doing very well. what you do see are very many women at the top. and it's always about the same number. it's 17% of the corporate suites are women, 17% of women in congress, 4% of fortune 500 ceos are females. 14% of fortune board members are female.

and 20% of full professors our female. so was not what we thought it was which was a pipeline issue. we've been in the pipeline for 30 years, so something else is going on. and i was quite fascinated by a study that was just reported out of yale where they decided to try to take the subjectivity out of evaluating applicants. it's like when they did in the orchestra the blind auditions behind a screen. once they put the musician behind a screen so the evaluators did know it was a male or female, it increased by 50% the likelihood that a woman would get hired. that was in the 1980s, and now in many orchestras auditioning behind the screen is standard practice. so they decided the most objective thing to do is to use science professors and to give them an application of a person who supplied as a lab manager. because they felt they would be

the most objective, data-oriented people. they had the same applications. one was called john and one was called jennifer. john was offered a better position and higher pay. and the conclusion they came to was that this is not, you know, an issue of our time. this is some deep seeded cultural societal bias which some have used women as less competent. even if you try to equate it across the board. so i think that's what we're up against. i think what young women are up against is a kind of sexism that far subtler than the ones that we face, which was so clearly illegal and so blatant. and i think that they are struggling to see how they can figure out how to combat something which may or may not look like sexism.

there's a couple of good ways, show that most of the bylines are men or most of the better assignments go guys, or your mutual friend has performed better are not well as his and he's gotten better the entire promotions. and also, cheryl as you all know has talked a lot about this. one of the things she said very easily is sit at the table. when you go into meetings, don't sit on the site. don't stand in the back. sit at the table. and a young woman in washington, i was talking to yesterday said, she has a woman boss and she said when she brings in something for her to go over, and she hasn't done it well, she says sorry, i'm sorry. and the woman said to her, don't say sorry. men don't say sorry. she said am always saying i'm

sorry. oh, i'm so sorry. i'm really sorry. and this woman said it's like breaking her of his habit to say i'm sorry. it's something that women do. and so i think that young women need mentors. young women need role models, which is what it's important to get women in leadership positions because you don't know that you can be a leader and i should see women who are leaders. i mean, i love the fact a friend of mine said his daughter has never lived in a time when a woman or black person wasn't secretary of state. so she asked her father, do you think a man could be a secretary of state? [laughter] so many of you in this room are role models. you've done it yourself, and i would just encourage you all to come you know, we have the vantage of a great movement behind us and a lot of excitement and a lot of energy. and these young women don't have that movement.

and so i think they need us as mentors. and used as role models. they needed to help them navigate. a friend of mine said to me the other day, do you think we should tell them what is waiting for them when they get out in the real-world? and i said, i don't think we should tell them any, because they can still, they're going to believe that they're going to be fine and have a great life. i said that, i think we need to say, if in your job you're finding things that are frustrating, or obstacles remain under not quite sure why, come and talk to us. and we will help you identify exactly what's going on and help you navigate. that's the kind of support i think they need. i'm rooting for this generation. they are really smart. they are super smart, super competent. and i know that cheryl talks about the ambition gap. i don't think it's an ambition get. these young women are ambitious but i think it's the confidence gap and a risk-taking get. there's no question or research that shows that women who

negotiate for the salary are punished for. they're seen as pushy or they are seen as aggressive or they are seen as demanding. and therefore are not offered jobs. there is a real issue with how a woman appears in the work of worse. but i think there's so much more that we can help them with, and that they can figure out how to make their way. and i think that all of us here should root for them and help them have a new women's movement is what i'm hoping for. so thank you very much. [applause] >> questions, rights? would anybody like to ask a question? yes. >> i worked for a school paper -- stomach we were actually assigned -- [inaudible] so i was

excited to see that you here so i could ask you. specifically for an all women's college, i was wondering if you had any advice as to how you could -- the potential a lot of power. how to harness that too, to even make women more aware that there still is inequality in the workplace, because i can pick him first and that many women think that there is no problem. and even me being raised by a man, it was very calm you could do whatever you want. and i'm realizing that's not necessarily true spent is often not true in schools. young women do so well. in fact, that's another problem which is why we're gradually so many more women than men and now we have a boy problem, which i think is quite a serious problem. by to think that, i mean, i say to a lot of young women, and i don't think you feel this until you get out into the workforce, i also know that in this

political season young woman realize that the rights we've all taken for granted are now being threatened. this is nothing to do with the work world. this has to do with the political world. this has to do with your own health and the decisions you make in your life. and i think that if you haven't gotten into the work world and are facing those obstacles, you can certainly organize around what is going on with women's issues throughout this country. and i think it is the one time i'm beginning to see that young women are beginning to sort of wake up and becoming more active around those issues. i think the work issues you have to experience. i don't think it's theoretical. like you can't be in college and think about the work thing. [inaudible] >> no. so you know is an older student. exactly. [inaudible] >> like an academic setting versus a workplace, how -- >> how political, i don't know.

spend its illiberal college spent are people getting politically active? that's the way to do. it's like my furniture from the twitchell project. it's like get women to run for office. help women get into office. we have to change the system. we have to change the corporate system and we have to change the political system. there's a lot of work that can be done. yes? >> i wonder what you thought about the stereotyping of jenna in the media, and whether or not that might be one of the reasons for this special or maybe not so special barriers that still exist? have you thought that -- >> yes. i me, there's been a lot of new interesting, there's a whole documentary called misrepresentation which is very good. we were just talking about though women's media center, which keeps track of all of

these sort of sexist adjectives and descriptions of women politically. they also do byline issues. they just didn't study with another group about a 70% of the stories written in this political season about politics have male bylines. but they have a campaign called name it, change it. and they point out very specifically instances where somebody is referred to in a very sexist way. and yes, i think there still is a lot of sexism. look what happened to hillary clinton when she ran. they're still a lot to be done on that. you know, i think that having more women in the media is helping, and i think if you look at the women, a lot of women are coming in politics. so they're not doing it, and i think women at the top, we only have jill abramson was just made after of "the new york times," but there's not another major

newspaper with female editors. they're smaller cities with women editors but that's the only major newspaper. and there are no women heads of the network news departments or the cable news departments. so that's what you're up against. yes? [inaudible] and so with the younger women are saying are more the appearance based which seems to me getting worse all the time in the way it depicts women. so you don't even see a print article anymore for a lot of -- you see a face of a woman. [inaudible] >> just these major news organizations are basically in print, especially dying as network news, so the new media that is now coming up is much

more what, you mean with the celebrities, celebrity obsessed it i have to say, i think i'm reading now a lot of young women's blogs on sites because i sort of could understand either. but -- stomac [inaudible] boring and unattractive and whatever. and so, and they're really into celebrity culture. but if you look at, if you look at jezebel or you look at them is, if you look at all these sites, they manage to have a lot of humor, a lot of celebrities. but they also do a lot on women's issues. somebody said something, the new

york magazine for example, just start a women's fashion site. you can't start a women's site now, even on fashion, that doesn't do with women's issues. so you have to step back and say what is this generation, what are the guys and how can you integrate what is important into the things they think are important? adams talking to a young woman at jezebel and she said, and jezebel is very snarky against other women. i'm not saying they are not, but she said the one thing is we have is we never discuss women's body. we are not allowed to ever talk about he was fat or who wasn't that whatever. i think we have to be a little more lenient and sort of understand where this generation is coming from, which isn't exactly where we came from. yes? spent i notice it doesn't seem to be just about whether a person is a woman. it's also about families. i went to a quote women's college, and in the alumni

association people would say that young women don't come until they start to have children. and that seems to be very much to. i also, once when i shared a job with a man, we were partners, and he would see the way i was treated as a woman more than i would pick because it's just threatening to see, to see all of it. it's overwhelming. >> just spent and you try not to be discriminatory, and every woman doctor u-lites move -- every woman doctor you like moves. spent i think the second wave was not successful in really pushing far enough, although we tried, is the work family issue. i don't like to think that as a women's issue. i think it's a societal issue. i think it has to do with men as well as women. but we did have an affordable accessible child care law that

can't pass congress in 1961. and richard nixon vetoed it because he thought it would destroy the nuclear family. there has never been another legislative push for coming and coming indie kind of public or private support for working families. and i'm hoping that table as young men have got now more involved in their families and have much more different values now, have lots of careers as well, that somehow we can get that back onto the political agenda because that's what's really keeping the talent pool. it's called for the key pipeline. we have a pipeline but it leads because so many women can't do both jobs well. it's really difficult. [inaudible] >> i think that is something we can all -- i'm not quite sure

how to do. i think even get within companies. we have to get more flexible. i just flew out of with a woman from a price waterhouse big accounting firm. and accountants have been more feminine organization for many, many years. young women have graduated in accounting for a long time, and the accounting firms are one of the first that went to part-time partnership track where you could be, take care to kids but still, and not be exiled from the partnership track. and she said that's still true, that they have a lot more flexibility, that they have a lot more women in the executive suite and they are trying to retain the women who they have trained and are very skilled. so, just. >> one other question. you are onto advisory boards, so it was international women's media foundation, and human rights women's division.

what issues are really prominent right now? like what's coming up? like what are hot topics? is or anything you're talking about on the board? >> well, for the international women's media foundation which supports women journalists around the world, i mean, we do several things for them. some of it is the same issues. we do a lot of leadership training for women journalists. we work mostly internationally, so we train young journalists who, dinner, step up, ask for raises, get the assignment, how to navigate, the sort of sexism in their class, in their papers or organizations. and we also teach them reporting and writing skills. where they don't really have access to it. and interestingly enough, and afterwards we have done a lot of work in improving the coverage of hiv and aids. women are the health reported and the big issues and african

news organizations are politics and sports. so it's always the women were in health and they can't get their stories into the papers are on the radio. so we have a model where we train not only orders can we train the editors to try to explain why these issues are so important for the readers or their listers. the human rights watch women's division has done a lot of work on reproductive rights in latin america. we've done a lot of work in rights for migrant workers, domestic worker rights. we've been in haiti, where in the tent cities and things women have gotten raped in the sort of chaos of what's going on in haiti. we pretty much are working on economic rights for women. because, particularly a place like africa. women can't inherit the land, or

if their husband dies and his family takes everything and they are out, it's a real issue. so we are beginning to do a lot more on economic rights of women as well. yes? >> just wanted to ask quickly, do you think that women have a different way of telling a story, as opposed to men? i just wonder in your experience, whether they might be covering the same? >> i don't like to necessarily say that. i do think having diversity in a newsroom is really important because people have different experiences. they bring different ideas, different story ideas. they bring in different sources. and one of the problems from the culture is a user comes from the top. so if a guy enjoys working with women and respects women, he tends to promote them. and if they can't therefore comfortable with guys and hangs out with guys, and talks to mostly guys, that's more of a

problem because then he's not bringing in any sort of diversity into the company. i mean, i see men and women to both kind of stories very well. i don't like to say it's always gender because there's a lot of guys are great bosses and there's a lot of women who aren't great bosses. [inaudible] >> those who did not work, because sometimes a man who has a mother who works look at a woman completely different as they grow older but i just wonder if -- >> i also would like to do a study on male bosses who have daughters. that's one of my future things. yes? >> do you talk at all about electronic media, both online, and especially network news, it seems a lease in my experience a lot of women are producers in

news, whether it be on radio, locally, nationally, television as well. but what i find really ironic is, especially today, may be connected with your comment about celebrity culture, when you look at certain so-called news organizations, fox, cnn, the women and the guys, it's both, one in the same, they are airheads. they really are. i'm saying the guys, too. and it bothers me so much knowing in particular that women are executive producers, and i wonder if, you know, the experience you've had and the people you know are putting any pressure on organizations like that to hire more serious journalists. you were talking earlier about print journalism. i'm wondering what thoughts you have about -- >> cable-television, to everything else but it's like radio talk show. you have to say come you can't you say the media.

if you're talking to cable television, that's a completely different animal than what network news or npr or public television or anything. so, you know, you're dealing with a very small audience that has a, it's only like under 2 million, but they have, you know, they are both now have taken, you know, fox is on the right, msnbc is on the left, and cnn is trying to be in the middle although now is not sure what it's going to be. but it's a ratings issue for them because they find that their ratings work when -- it becomes a talk radio on television. and so i don't think it has to do with gender. i think they'll hire anyone who fulfills and it's the ratings they want. and i think what's interesting, i actually worked at msnbc.com. i was there for the launch of the internet side of msnbc cable.

and at the time msnbc cable have not gone very far and people left. it was trying to stake out competition with cnn, which was sort of in the middle. but they have a ratings issue in cable, which is to say that cable does really well when there are breaking news. everybody turns into cable. wind is not breaking news their ratings slump it's a problem for them is, are they willing to take the slump in order to stay on the news and to be credible or whatever they want to be? or are they going to program to try to keep the ratings of all the time? that's essentially what's happened to the msnbc and fox, and cnn is now caught in the middle because it tried to stay in the middle and its ratings have plummeted. so yes, look at from so that point. i don't think it's a gender point of view, frankly. >> i notice you don't seem to list the women were involved in a lawsuit. is that because they didn't want

to? >> no. it's a big mistake. in the next printing, hopefully, and on the e-book they will be listed. >> give us -- there were other lawsuits. "time" magazine was -- >> one of our signatories, she was a member of our lawsuit. [applause] >> two months after we sued the women at time inc. sued across timing so they sued time, fortune and "sports illustrated." in 1973 the reader's digest hired herriot, our lawyer, and they sued. and 97 for "the new york times" women hired our lawyer and they see. then nbc suit, and they actually, i think their suit was settled around, but they want to million dollars in back pay. i think one thing i regret is we didn't even think of asking for money. we just like couldn't get out of

the category but it wasn't even like, and asked harry, i said why did we ask the second time for money? she said i don't know, i think was a failure of imagination. [laughter] so, and it was new haven register's andrew your suit. so it opened the door for suits. and after that, women animals every news organization had committees and all sorts of things. whether they find sued or not they put a lot of pressure on the committees. anyway, thank you. it's been a wonderful evening. tank you for coming. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's website. >> fifty years ago president john f. kennedy was in the midst of the cuban missile crisis and recorded this account of the debate among his top advisers on the u.s. course of action. >> secretary mcnamara, general

>> it's the 50th anniversary of the cuban missile crisis, this weekend on american history tv. the historian, scholars, film makers and journalists, flight sunday from the jfk presidential library and museum on c-span3. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's our primetime lineup for tonight.

>> the year was 1981, or 1982, and i was living in hong kong where i was working for the asian "wall street journal." i was the op-ed editor, and one day a submission crossed my desk. it was written by an italian journalist who was living in what we then called peking.

he had secured a very rare visa to go to pyongyang and had written an article for his publication about it and sent a translation to me hoping the asian "wall street journal" would publish it. of course, we did. and i was, i was really blown away by. it was completely eye-opening to me, especially his description of the mass public worship of kim il-sung who was then the leader of north korea. it was like reading a chapter from 1984 your george orwell's vision had come to life at a few years earlier as the democratic people republic of korea but also as the years went by i couldn't get the closing line of the italian journalist article out of my head. it read, when i got off the plane in peking, i kissed the ground, happy to be back in a free country. a free country, china, in 1981?

i have been the. i knew china wasn't free. was it really possible that the good be a place that north korea could be worse? 30 years later we know the answer to that question. north korea is the world's most repressive state. its people are the slaves of the chemcam regime which controls every aspect of their life. even whether they get to eat. religion is banned. there is no rule of law, and perceived political infractions are met with harsh punishment. punishment i should add that is often meted out to three generations of a person stood at a political offender knows that when he goes to prison, his parents and his children will probably go with them. there are probably about 200,000 north koreans today in the

gulags, and more than a million perhaps as high as 2 million, have already died. the reason we now all of this, and much, much more is thanks to the testimonies of north koreans who have escaped. these are the people i write about in my book. this knowledge comes to us despite the best efforts of the kim family regime to keep it secret. for more than 50 years, ever since the end of the korean war, north korea has sealed off from the worlds eyes. the kim family regime has pursued an isolationist policy and it maintains an iron grip on information. access to which is very strictly controlled. to give just one example, every radio must be registered with government, and its dial must be fixed to the government run radio station. to enforce this rule, security police equipped with scanners

cruise neighborhoods trying to identify households where residents have tinkered with radios and are tuning in to banned foreign radio broadcasts. surveys of north koreans hiding in china show that a high percentage of them listen to foreign radio broadcasts in north korea, in defiance of the rule. and their motivation to leave was in part influenced by what they heard on those foreign radio broadcasts. people are hungry for information about the outside world. north koreans to escape must first go to china. they can't go south to south korea, strange as it may seem, because the demilitarized zone that runs along the 38th parallel is despite its name, the most militarized border in the world, and it's impossible to get across endless you are a soldier who has been shown the safe route. and only a few people make it

out of north korea by going across the dmz. instead they go to china, and in china the north koreans usually finds that he has exchanged one circle of hell for another. china's policy is to track down the north koreans in their country, arrest them and send them back to north korea. where they face imprisonment or worse, for the so-called crime of leaving their country. this policy, this chinese policy, is both immoral and it's in contravention of china's obligations under international treaties it has signed. nevertheless some of the north koreans who are hiding in china decide to risk a second escape. out of china to south korea. no one can accomplish this feat on his own. some people can get out of north korea on their own, and ahead of

the rescuers rarely reaches into north korea itself, but if somebody wants to get out of china they need help. the distances are too great and the challenges to high for a north korean to do it on his own. this is where the new underground railroad comes in. like the original underground railroad in the pre-civil war american south, the new underground railroad is a network of safe houses and secret routes across china. the operators are both human traffickers who are in it for the money, and christians whose religious beliefs impelled them to help their north korean brothers and sisters. thanks to the underground railroad, which has been operating for about 12 years, an increasing number of north koreans are reaching safety in the south, and a few other countries. the explosion in the number of north koreans who have gotten out in recent years is very striking.

south korea keeps track of the north koreans to reach south korea, and let me share with you just a couple of the numbers. in 1990, only nine north koreans were able to reach south korea. last year, 2757 north koreans reached safety in the south. so, they people to get out now have formed a large, there's enough of them that they are educating us about the truth of life in north korea. and there have been several books published about life in north korea, and we now have a much better picture of what the truth of the existence is there. but the north korean refugees are performing a second equally important function. hard to believe, more important to their helping to open up their own information starved

homeland. just ask the world now knows more about north korea, north koreans now know far more about the world. this, too, is thanks to the efforts of north koreans who have escaped. how do they do that? think a minute. any immigrant who goes to a new country, what's the first thing he wants to do? he wants to lead his family back home know that he is okay. and tell them about his new life. but for a north korean who wants to do that, it's next to impossible. you can't make a phone call to north korea. you can send an e-mail or text message or facebook pic and you can't even mail a letter. so the exiles have created a black market in information. they hired chinese carriers to cross the border and deliver messages, or sometimes they deliver chinese cell phones to a north korean relative, tell the relative to go to an area near

the border on a certain day at a certain hour, turn on the phone and receive a phone call from the relative who has escaped to a different country. in south korea, north korean exiles have formed organizations whose purpose is to get information into north korea. to give just one example, there are four radio stations run by north korean exiles that broadcast daily to north korea. the manager of the kim family regime that north korea is the greatest most prosperous nation on earth, and that the north korean people are the world's happiest is being exposed for the lie that it is. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week. ..